Thursday, October 18, 2012

The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It: A Review of Free Will, by Sam Harris, Part III

Much of Harris' argument against free will is fueled by assertions--assertions that simply assume what he is trying to prove. In fact, much of his case consists of sheer bluff, as if saying what he is trying to prove with enough bravado is sufficient to prove his case:

"There is," he says, "simply no intellectually respectable position from which to deny this." No denying this. Check. "There is no question that (most, if not all) mental events are the product of physical events." No question. Got it. "My mental life is simply given to me by the cosmos." Right. Blessed be the Almighty Cosmos.

He argues that we are not aware of the neurological events that produce our thoughts, moods, perceptions, and behavior, and that, since we are not aware of them, they must produce our thoughts. Not only does this not logically follow, it simply assumes that these things are "produced" by neurological events, when this is the very point at issue.

He is singularly impressed with the evidence that neurological events seem to precede the thoughts they "produce":

The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain's motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move ... More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict that 80 percent accuracy a person's decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it.

"These findings," he adds, "are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions." Why? He argues that this shows that "some moments before you are aware of what you will do next, your brain has already determined what you will do." But before we can decide what we can infer from the evidence we have to ask exactly what the evidence is.

He appears to be saying that there are two chemical events being detected by scientific instruments: one which is the physical event that causes the decision, and one which is the physical event that constitutes our awareness that we are making the decision.

The first question is how we know which event--the one that Harris identifies as pre-determinative and the one that he identifies as the awareness of making the decision--is the decision itself. He seems to identify the latter event--the awareness of the decision--as the decision itself. But an awareness of a decision isn't necessarily the decision. In fact, on the face of it, it would make more sense to think that the awareness of making a decision is a separate act from the decision itself. The mental act of thinking about something and the mental act of thinking about your mental act of thinking about something would clearly be two mental acts.

In other words, by what reasoning does he say that the first chemical event is pre-determinative and the second what is pre-determined? Why couldn't the first event be the decision and the second the awareness that we have made the decision? Given Harris' penchant for making assumptions he has not justified, it seems like we are justified in being suspicious. There may be some reason to interpret it the way he does, but he does not give us enough information to know what it is. It is not even clear that he has considered any alternative interpretation than the one that favors his case.

So when Harris asks us what we should think about a situation (which he clearly considers possible) in which experimenters could know, a split second before you made it, what your decision would be, we could simply ask what justifies them in thinking that the neurological event they had thought was the event which caused the decision was not the decision itself, and the latter the neurological event co-incident with awareness of the decision they had just made?

In fact, one question is whether we can ever reliably know the answer to this question at all.

And then Harris makes this rather strange statement:

Consider what it would take to actually have free will. You would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to have complete control over those factors.

You would? Think of what would be necessary, if what Harris says here is true, to drive a car: You would need to be aware of all the factors that make the car go, and you would have to have complete control over them. Now I'm pretty sure most people on the road have no clue how their engine was put together or how it works, and they have very little control over how these factors work together at any given moment. But they seem to get around just fine. In fact, Harris' assertion here is just silly.

Then Harris makes statements which are simply ludicrous. He says, "If you don't know what your soul is going to do next, you are not in control." Huh? You have to know what your decision is before you make it in order for it to be a free will decision? Why? And if this is the case, then what about the neurological event that Harris would say would have to constitute the knowledge of what the decision will be? Would we need to know what that knowledge would be before we had it too? How far back do we need to go?

Then there are the statements full import of which one must meditate on for long periods of time in highly oxygenated air in order to fully appreciate: "A voluntary action," he says, "is accompanied by the felt intention to carry it out." No kidding? Really? "We do not know what we intend to do until the intention arises." No! Get out!

And all this in preparation for the next chapter, in which we are told that it is those who believe in free will who are not being rational.

7 comments:

'But an awareness of a decision isn't necessarily the decision. In fact, on the face of it, it would make more sense to think that the awareness of making a decision is a separate act from the decision itself.'

So are you now arguing that someone making a decision in a state of unawareness of making that decision is exercizing fee will?!

This sounds absurd to me. The entire idea of free will is that the agent (us) is consciously and freely making decisions about what to do. If you're not even aware of what your choice is, how could you possibly call it free?

'So when Harris asks us what we should think about a situation (which he clearly considers possible) in which experimenters could know, a split second before you made it, what your decision would be, we could simply ask what justifies them in thinking that the neurological event they had thought was the event which caused the decision was not the decision itself, and the latter the neurological event co-incident with awareness of the decision they had just made?'

Again you are making the seemingly absurd claim that a decision we are unaware of making constitutes a 'free' choice!

If a researcher would be able to tell you a second before you become of aware of your decision what your decision will be, you would not have any free will at all - you would never, for instance, be able to choose an action that the experimenter did not anticipate. Your actions would be pre-determined by whatever the experimenter tells you based on his observation of your brain activity.

'You would? Think of what would be necessary, if what Harris says here is true, to drive a car: You would need to be aware of all the factors that make the car go, and you would have to have complete control over them. Now I'm pretty sure most people on the road have no clue how their engine was put together or how it works, and they have very little control over how these factors work together at any given moment. But they seem to get around just fine. In fact, Harris' assertion here is just silly.'

That's a pretty extreme categorical mistake you make in your analogy there, Martin.

If any action is to be considered completely 'free', then Harris is indeed right to say we would need to have complete knowledge of any and all factors that could influence it and be able to control them. Otherwise the decision would - by dfinition - be completely free of external influence.

Now, imagine a car with cruise control. You get in the car, the cruise control is active by default. Thus, without the knowledge that the cruise control is on by default and how to turn it off, you are in no way shape or form 'free' to drive the car any ay you like - you are restricted to a certain cruising speed.

But even if you knew about the cruise control, you would have to know about every single aspect of the car, it's working components and the exterior factors influencing its driving to be able to make *truly* and *completely* free decisions about how to drive it. For example, if I wanted to make the completely free decision to drive at 57.3421 mph, I would have to know how accurate my speedometer is, what external factors may influence the accuracy of my speedometer and how those factors will change second to second. It's an impossibility.

Practically, we don't need that complete kind of knowledge because we are perfectly happy to use our cars in the restricted sense that we know by and large what they do and roughly what factors influence their operation.

It's always easier to take the position of arguing for determinism, because it has explanatory power. Arguing against that really needs at least a clear position, if not some good evidential or philosophical argument.

The trouble here is, if decisions don't come from the functioning of the brain, then from whence do they come? Even if you bring God into it, and accept whatever spiritual propositions, what exactly do you propose to add? I mean, even the most religious and spiritual person has to admit that the brain has something to do with decision making, and furthermore that the brain at least on some level works according to known physical laws and rules.

If one wants to propose a magical ingredient to add to that, what is it? How does it work? What causes it to do what it does? Aren't you just pushing the same philosophical conundrum back a level? If you have a spirit that somehow causes will, by what laws does this spirit decide stuff? If its according to how God made it, then is that free? If its according to its somehow inner makeup, how is that a philosphical advancement on just saying the brain did it according to its inner makeup?

"The trouble here is, if decisions don't come from the functioning of the brain, then from whence do they come?"

Well, the mind. There are seriously compelling reasons to distinguish between properties of matter and mind. Intentionality, roughly aboutness, is perhaps the most prime example: if we say that a neuron or some chemical concoction can have, we've thus expanded the definition of matter to the edges of equivocation. And the only reason we would try is because we're previously committed to materialism.

Believing the mind to be distinct from the brain does not require you to consider them to be separate substances a la Descartes (which creates the mind-body interaction problem). Man is a whole substance, meaning he has both brain and mind, and it's no surprise that there is a connection between them.

The only way determinism is superior in its explanatory power is when the mind is ignored or misconceived. Harris seems keen to do one or the other, when necessary.

However it's not assuming the existence of mind. But through consideration of human nature and reality leads to that affirmation.

One I've already mentioned: intentionality. Our thoughts are inherently directed at something else. When I think about the ocean, it is 'about' something besides the thought itself. This is a dominant feature of mental activity and appears to be fundamentally different than anything material (e.g. this rock/tree/quark/proton/neuron is not 'about' anything, it just is).

Another is universals. Every material thing we experience is an individual or particular. I see a tree, a dog, a star, or under the microscope I see a cell. But the only reason these things are comprehensible is because we form a universal concept that allows us to identify and categorize them. We can identify what a dog or star or cell is, and understand its essence. However, since everything material is a particular, we cannot explain the fact we can grasp a universal by appealing to the brain alone, which is quite obviously material. So we must posit an intellect and mind.

Thirdly, truth. It's another feature that cannot be accounted for in purely material terms. A tree or photon is not 'true'; but my belief that a tree has leaves is true. It is quite a magic trick to account for truth when denying the only medium in which it can exist (and further claiming that is true!).

Fourthly, space and time (or lack thereof). In the material world everything is here or there, above or below; young or old, alive or dead etc. However, my thought that the sky is blue is not above or behind my other thought that grass is green. Nor does it my thought age like material things; of course it might change, but that's different altogether. It makes no sense to speak of the number 4 growing old, or being very tall or wide.

Basically the idea is that the properties and nature of our mental activity is distinct from matter. It is illogical to reduce two things that are different into an identity.

The only way to propose that materialism is true, is to form the proposition "materialism is true".

However, it's not clear how we can account for a proposition using the constraints of matter. It's made of a subject, a predicate, and a truth value, which are not explainable by meaningless bits of matter. In this sense, to argue for materialism is to undercut the argument, in principle.

That said, because we cannot remove a few brain cells and reconstruct a proposition does not mean there's no correlate to the brain. The brain is necessary, but not sufficient.

You've thrown in a word: "mind", as if just the word forms an argument. But what does that mean?

You've thrown in another word "materialism". Well, what you mean by that, and what exactly you want to reject and embrace by denigrating that term is not very clear.

Let me throw a little conundrum at you... Is God powerful enough to give us a real and true mind with "free will" (however you would like to define that), that functions via material processes.. (processes that God invented BTW). Is God big enough to do that, or not?